Diplomatic Immunity
by Jontg
Summary: The Dragonborn's power suddenly has a price when he needs to shed his distinctive looks in time for a reception at the Thalmor Embassy. If he avoids using the Thu'um for three days, he'll be able to blend in - but what is the Dovahkiin without his Voice?
1. Silence is Golden

Author's Note: Well, after, what, six years? I'm finally back to writing. This is basically practice for a bigger, more publishable story I'm working on-I'm trying to refine my technique, develop a proper work ethic, and generally get to be the professional I need to be to succeed as a writer. To that end, I'm putting to paper one of my latest little ideas, a fic starring my personal Dragonborn, Ormuric, and generally following the storyline of the quest of the same name-with a few little changes. I hope even purists and serious types will appreciate my take on the Dragonborn, who can be a bit more Discworld than Game of Thrones at times-but if not, then I hope you'll stick around to see what happens. I promise, the payoff at the end is massive. And now... on with the show!

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><p>"Ormuric, we need to talk."<p>

Delphine's tone brooked no argument, but Ormuric Dragonborn was never one to argue when he could simply ignore. With a grunt, he turned over in bed, pulling the furs over his head and quietly hoping that the disturbance would go away.

"Ormuric, I mean it. Fate of the world."

"Rrrmph." The Dovahkiin, heir of Tiber Septim, wielder of the Voice, implacable foe of dragonkind, and hope of all Tamriel, resigned himself to getting out of bed. He sat up and cracked his jaw, solid black eyes not quite focusing on anything. "My ribs are still killing me..."

"Serves you right." The innkeeper leaned in the door frame, a scroll in her hand, and a faint smirk playing across her weathered features. "Picking a fight with a whole troop of giants was dumb enough, but couldn't you have done that on the way to Kynesgrove? You know, before you let Sahloknir jump up and down on your spine?"

"I told you, I had him right where I wanted him." Ormuric stood up and lurched to the nightstand, floorboards creaking under his immense bulk. "Can't kill a dragon if he's in the air, can you? Besides, you said we were in a hurry."

"But why did you go after the giants in the first place?"

"Bounty." Ormuric splashed a bit of cold water in his face, and shook out his snowy white hair like an enormous, shaggy dog. "Jarl whatshername down in Riften is offering a thousand gold for that big matron's head - don't suppose you kept it?"

Delphine sighed. "No, it never occurred to me - but speaking of your little... quests, there was a Louis Letrush to see you a few hours ago. Apparently he offered you three hundred septims to... Divines, I can't believe you, Ormuric... steal a horse from the Black-Briar crime syndicate?"

Ormuric scowled, taking a thin hank of his hair from just behind his left ear and beginning to braid it. "Never did pay me..."

"That's because you brought him a talking purple unicorn."

The dragonborn paused in his work - amazingly delicate work, for a man who looked like he spent all day punching things. "Hmm... sounds about right."

Experience told Delphine that asking for more details on Ormuric's extracurricular heroics only brought more confusion. Some self-destructive, Freudian todestrieb made her ask anyway. "Where in the world did you even find a unicorn? They're supposed to be extinct..."

"M'not sure, actually." Ormuric finished the braid and began working on another. "I think that was the night I shut down those moon-sugar smugglers in Cragslane Cavern... there was a fire... lots of smoke... it's all kind of a... colorful blur."

Delphine tried not to think about the popular lore surrounding unicorns. "The point..." Especially the bit where the last one had ridden out across the sea two hundred years ago, the mad god Sheogorath whooping on its back, heralding the cataclysmic dawn of a new era... "The point is, he's not paying until you bring him the right horse. And that's going to have to wait - our next target is the Thalmor."

Ormuric grinned. "Point me at 'em."

"No killing this time, dragonborn." Delphine unrolled a map. "If the elves know anything about the return of the dragons, we need to find out what. And that will require a bit of subtlety on your part."

"I'm not sure I like where this is going..."

"We need to get an operative into the Thalmor Embassy in Haafingar - and since they're already looking for me, that leaves you. There's a reception in three days, and I've managed to get my contact in Ambassador Elenwen's household to forge you an invitation."

Finishing the last of his customary four braids, Ormuric sighed and began strapping himself into his armor - sturdy leather scale reinforced with small sections of steel plate, designed and custom-fitted to offer protection from blade, club, and the chill Skyrim winds without compromising freedom of movement. "And I take it this means you want me to gather things from all corners of Skyrim to make a convincing disguise? Shop around in Solitude for a wig, maybe talk to Belethor about a big fake mustache..."

"No need." Delphine produced a vial of deep brown dye. "I've already got everything I need to deal with your..." She waved a hand expressively. "...hair."

"What's wrong with my hair?"

"How old are you, Ormuric? Twenty? Twenty-five?"

"Uh... closer to twenty. Can't really remember."

Delphine pointed at the nightstand mirror. "Well, you're the only twenty-year-old in the province with white hair - not to mention those eyes. I still don't know what we're going to do about your eyes - even an elf can tell solid ebony isn't in the normal human color range."

"They weren't always like this..." Ormuric scratched his beard, eyeing himself in the mirror. "They turned black after Helgen - right after Alduin Shouted at me."

Delphine pursed her lips. "So, about a month ago... and they've been that way ever since?"

Ormuric nodded, standing. "Mmhm - well, almost. There was that big wagon trip I took - I decided I should see all nine of the Holds, and by the time I got to Windhelm, my hair and eyes had both turned brown."

"Ormuric..." Delphine's eyes narrowed. "Ormuric, I need you to think for me... what happened on that trip?"

Ormuric shrugged. "Well, nothing, really - no bandits, no storms, no dragons, not even any wild animals. The roads are pretty safe, even these days - I don't think I even needed to Shout once."

"You never used the thu'um?"

"Nope."

"Ormuric, that's it!" Delphine grinned triumphantly. "It's your Voice - your body reacts when you Shout! That means all we need to do to give you a natural disguise is figure out how long it took your hair to get back to its natural color. Do you remember how long that trip took?"

"Well..." Ormuric thought for a moment, doing math on his fingers. "Whiterun to Falkreath, Falkreath to Riften... Riften to Windhelm, that's about three days, counting the stop I made at the shrine of Talos."

"Then there's our answer - but that leaves us with a bit of a problem."

"I'm... beginning to see that. You said three days until...?"

"Exactly." Delphine prepared her best no-nonsense glare and fired it at the dragonborn. "If we're going to get you in the front door, we need you not looking like Ysmir's ghost. And that means..."

"No Shouting?"

"For the next three days."


	2. Of Nails and Other Small Things

DAY ONE, 12:45 PM

The Greybeards had shown Ormuric a dozen _proper_ forms for meditation; odd ways of sitting, mostly named after plants, and some strange Akaviri calisthenics that he could have lived and died a happy man without seeing demonstrated by old men in loincloths. He found it was much more effective to just lean against a tree - in particular, the big old pine behind the Sleeping Giant Inn was shady, surrounded by nice, soft moss, and if anything bigger than a gecko turned up at the gates, the guard knew he was only a yell away.

_He lay his head on the block, the blood of the last man to die upon it still warm and wet, and resigned himself to Sovngarde._

Today, in particular, he felt a need to clear his mind. Most men who'd had four tons of scaly terror land on them would never have left the sickbed again - possibly because their legs now knew better. As it was, everyone was mystified that the Dragonborn could even control his bowels - let alone walk, however haltingly. But while injuries that should have taken weeks to heal routinely closed in hours for Ormuric, the collected wives and mothers of Riverwood had been unanimous - invincible freak of nature or no, with his back broken in three places, Ormuric was out of the action and confined to the village walls, and it was slowly driving him mad.

_The executioner's axe caught the sun, blinding him - and then the sun went black._

A good fight he could handle. Something honest and straightforward - a couple of bandits, maybe, or a rampaging dremora. Something he could test himself against, something that could be overcome if his shield arm was stout and his sword arm strong. But this idleness grated on him, turning his thoughts to things he could no more defeat than forget, no matter how he longed to.

_Swift as nightfall it came, gliding out of the shadow of the distant mountains. Great wings beat the air as it scudded forward, vast and silent as a stormcloud, and for a moment he was sure he was the only one who saw it..._

He'd been helpless. But he hadn't been afraid. He'd long expected to die on a headsman's block - a common criminal, a form waiting to be filled on some imperial bureaucrat's desk, neither terribly missed or much remembered...

_And then someone screamed, the dragon opened its mouth, and the sky split open._

"Fus."

He focused on the only thing that settled his thoughts, the one real goal he could work toward at the moment: contemplating the syllables of the thu'um. "Ro. Fus... Ro."

It was strange... until now, Shouting had come easily to him. The Words were intuitive, each syllable of a Shout following logically from the one before it. To breathe fire, you used Yol - fire, in the ancient tongue of dragons. To breathe a more intense flame, you used stronger language - Toor, inferno. It was simple. It all made internal sense. Except, that is, for this one.

By rights, he should have mastered all three Words of Unrelenting Force. He had, to date, mastered one. Force was useful - it knocked an attacker around a bit, giving Ormuric breathing room, and didn't leave him winded the way many more powerful Shouts did. But still, the fact that there were more powerful Shouts, some of which he already understood, was both a problem and a puzzle.

The second Word of Unrelenting Force was Ro - Balance - and it was probably that that made it so difficult to learn. To learn a Word, you needed to understand it completely; take it into yourself and make it part of you. But Force and Balance seemed like total opposites - like trying to augment Yol with a word that meant ice or cold. How did they relate?

"Mister?"

"Hm?" Ormuric looked up-and up again, towards the source of the greeting. A little girl, maybe seven or eight years old, was peering down at him. Dorthe, the blacksmith's daughter-slash-apprentice, hung by her knees from a sturdy branch, regarding him with the sort of unimpressed curiosity that suggests the regarder is doing the regardee _such_ a huge favor by their interest.

"Whatcha doing?"

Ormuric grinned up at her. "Not much, at the moment... gotta rest up so I can fix my back and get back to dragonslaying!" He flexed for emphasis, which only set Dorthe giggling. "Now, the question is... what're you doing up there?"

"Cliiiiiiimbing?" She managed to drag the answer out until it became a question.

"You know what I mean, girl..." Ormuric dragged himself to his feet, gently unhooking girl from tree. "What would your father say if I let - " It was at this point that he realized what a bad idea this was.

When the world started to be composed of things other than pain, and noises that weren't some variation of_ ngaaaaa_ came more easily to his lips, Ormuric chanced opening his eyes. Dorthe was perched on his chest, looking down at him. "Are you really the Dragonborn?"

This time it was Ormuric's turn to laugh. "It's just what everyone calls me. I can Shout, I guess, and I can kill dragons, so..."

Dorthe grinned, confident that she had found a loose thread in the grown-up's story. "But the Jarl sent some new soldiers out from Whiterun, and they told me they had to help you kill one..."

"Well, they're right..." Ormuric smiled up at her. "If they hadn't helped keep that big green one off me at the watchtower, he'd have broiled me alive. I may be tough, but even I have trouble with those guys - in fact..." He gently patted her on the shoulder. "I need everyone's help if I'm gonna win this. Even yours!"

Dorthe rolled her eyes. "I'm not a baby, you know - I'm too old to play pretend. How am I supposed to help you fight huge, scary lizard... daedra... things? That sneeze fire and have teeth as big as my arm?"

"Hey, I'm not playing with you - promise! Think about it..." Ormuric gingerly moved his captor from chest to lap, sitting up. "I can't be everywhere at once. When I'm not around, you need a whole army to take out a dragon. And what does an army need to even be an army? What's even more important than food and water?"

"Hmm..." The girl pursed her lips. And then bit one. And then pursed them again. "...clothes?"

"Almost - arms and armor!" Ormuric grinned. "You're a big help to your papa, girl; he says he wouldn't trade you for a second set of hands." Dorthe blushed, eyes widening, and he pressed his point. "In fact... you know what the most important part of my armor is? The one thing that I can't go sprinting all over the province without?"

"Nope."

"Boots!" The Dragonborn fished around in his pouches for a moment. "See where I'm going?"

Dorthe beamed, finally getting it. "And you can't make boots without..."

Ormuric produced a single iron hobnail. "And who makes just about every fifth nail that comes outta your Papa's forge?"

"Me!"

"See what I mean? Everybody's important; you might not be turning out enchanted battleaxes just yet, but without you, half the Whiterun garrison would be marching around in their slippers."

Dorthe nodded sagely, turning this revelation over in her head. "I never thought of it that way... thanks!"

"Just doing my job, miss - now you head back your Papa and do yours, alright?"

"Yes, sir!" Dorthe saluted briskly with an imaginary sword, and turned to walk home. "Oh! Um..." She turned back, visibly rooting through her mind's intray. "That reminds me. Papa says you need to come quick, 'cause there's a naked elf jumping up and down in the forge."

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><p>Ha! Finally! God, that was tough-I just couldn't get the dialogue quite right. But better late than never, I guess-I'm working on Chapter Three as I speak, and this time I'll try to apply some of that work ethic I've been hearing so much about.<p>

A word about story and gameplay segregation - I want to keep things mostly true to the actual mechanics of Skyrim, but I'm more concerned with A) the lore and B) telling the best story I can with my limited talent, and if that means Ormuric occasionally pulling off a stunt that would get him killed in-game, so be it. I'm sure Scorsese could have made a really tense, deconstructivist historical drama out of three hundred Spartans huddling behind their shields for two days, but Zack Snyder needed them to break formation and go kick some ass.


End file.
